Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 11:50:04 -0400
Subject: RE: Serbian avantgarde 



Responding to msg by jsherburne-AT-arpa.mil (jsherburne) on 24 Aug 
1995 

>Laibach uses  fascist/totalitarian 
>imagery the same way a person in the United States 
>would  use images of 50's advertising - we have lava 
>lamps, they have swastikas.  I  don't know which of the 
>two is the case.  Perhaps like "Tito and Me", it is a  
>combination of the two.



An awesome syllogism.


At the risk of being rude, but is not this above-the-fray 
demigod-like perspective itself kitsch fascism -- hardly 
distinguishable from the softened-by-adjective mastercult.


One sees such distancing also, say, on the Nietzsche and 
Heidegger lists as well, playing mindfun games with 
faux-daring, misbehaving for notoriety, seeing how far one can 
go to shock by adulating apologists for power-madness.


Was it not something like such aestheticism that brought those 
National Socialists out of the kellers and into scenographic 
spectacularing of the populace, then transmuting that 
beguilment into volk-supported murderous power. Walter 
Benjamin, among other contemporary critics, saw that show for 
what it was.


Perhaps we need to take a harsh look at darling, daring, 
aestheticism as an end in itself -- the avant-garde using 
kitsch to cloak much worse coming down the pipeline.


So, it would be helpful to elaborate on the specific links 
between lava lamps and swatiskas, translate that odd duo of 
retro-minded examples into today's nasty hip dialectic of the 
arts-as-propaganda agenda.


JY


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